The use of the Internet has become very important for commerce, and other daily tasks. An important component of the Internet are proxy devices, which are used to route information from one network device on the Internet to another network device. Typically, a proxy device is a computing device, router, or the like, that is configured to operate as a relay between two communication devices on a network.
Proxy devices may have varying behaviors. Some proxy devices may simply forward a request and/or response message between the network devices without modifying the forwarded messages, while others may modify the messages before forwarding them. Some proxy devices may provide the identity of the requestors, while others may hide or obscure the identities or activities of users of these devices. Typically, this information hiding is carried out to prevent detection of fraudulent or otherwise malicious requestors. For example, spammers may use these devices to hide the origin of their attacks.
Identifying the quality and kind of network traffic coming from a proxy device may be helpful to, among other things, distinguish legitimate network traffic from non-legitimate network traffic. Currently, lists of proxy devices are published on the Internet. However, many proxy list generation mechanisms rely on volunteered lists of IP address that could be scanned by a variety of products. Moreover, many lists are manually entered, and they may not be up to date or accurate. Further, the addresses on the lists often depend on specific ports and/or IP addresses. Therefore, it is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.